


people like us know how to survive

by drusillaes



Series: i've nothing left to hide from you; i've got no god to sell [2]
Category: American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Alternate Universe -Dark, Bad Ending, Everyone has feelings, F/F, F/M, Hate Sex, Local Lesbian Sucks at Feelings, More Murder, Murder, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 15:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20968943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drusillaes/pseuds/drusillaes
Summary: Madison tries to enjoy their new life. Zoe can't.For everyone who requested a continuation of "cause you and i know this is heaven", well, my hand slipped.





	people like us know how to survive

Zoe hasn’t spoken to her since they’ve arrived at the ruins of Ms. Robichaux’s. Now she’s perched moodily on the broken staircase, kicking at rubble. Madison sighs. “I’m sorry,” she says.  
Zoe’s reply is muffled. “No, you’re not.”

Madison tries to smile. “So she does speak.” The short witch steps over a shattered column in order to take a seat next to Zoe, who still won’t look at her.

“You let him kill them all.”

“Not Mallory,” Madison points out, as if mentioning Zoe’s favorite student might give her brownie points with the depressed witch. Zoe does turn to look at her then, and her glare is a terrifying thing. “Right. I’m sure the Antichrist had nothing but sweet, fluffy plans for Mal.”

“I’m not going to feel bad about it, okay?” Madison snaps, tired of this soppy bullshit. “I did what I had to do to protect us. To protect _you_.”

Zoe doesn’t reply.  
“I love you,” Madison says, feeling weak, feeling stupid.

Zoe stands abruptly. She leans in as if to kiss Madison and then she whispers something against her almost-lover’s painted lips. “I don’t care how long it takes, Madison. I’m going to find a way to kill you. For good.”

Madison doesn’t need to sleep anymore, just like she doesn’t need to eat, but she does it anyway, sprawling out naked on the remains of Cordelia’s mattress. She barely sees Zoe anymore unless the other witch is trying to murder her. At first Zoe had tried the usual ways -slitting Madison’s throat with a cursed letter opener, for instance, or blowing her head off with a sawed-off shotgun. Madison could deflect the bullets and blades with her magic, but she doesn’t. Maybe hurting her is the closest thing Zoe has to therapy, and it’s not like it doesn’t all grow back eventually.

It’s been thirteen years, two days, and 1,564 murder attempts since Madison’s betrayal when Zoe tries a different tactic.

“Fuck me.”

“Excuse me?” Madison’s used her magic to restore Robichaux’s to a shell of its former glory. Now she’s examining herself critically, eternally nineteen, in several of the mirrors she’s reassembled. She couldn’t get rid of the cracks. They remain, just as broken as everything else in the Montgomery makeshift paradise.

Zoe pulls her black dress over her head. She’s not wearing underwear. “Please, Madison?”

It’s the _please_ that breaks her, andMadison does a shitty job not showing it. “What if your magic clit kills me?” she asks lamely, although to be honest, that would be the dream way to go out, breathing her last into the blonde curls between Zoe’s incredible legs.

Zoe’s smile, while sly and mean, is still the most beautiful thing Madison’s seen in an artificial lifetime. “Isn’t that the point?”

They fuck. Zoe climaxes three times. Madison doesn’t even die once.

“Don’t tell me you want to cuddle,” Madison says to hide her own hurt and confusion when Zoe doesn’t leave immediately. The tall witch snorts. “I hate you,” she says, as if Madison’s forgotten. As if Madison could ever forget.

Madison’s pale fingers twirl, itching for a cigarette. “I know.”

The perimeter spell was Madison’s idea. It was just as much to keep the infected humans out as it was to keep Zoe Benson from doing anything stupid.

Madison’s sleeping when Zoe breaks out. That’s all she has now, sleep, now that she’s used every last herb in the greenhouse chasing a high and she drank the house dry after Zoe cut off her head with a chainsaw. (It wasn’t even the pain, it was the way Zoe spoke to her while she grew back her head, confidential and cruel,reminding her that she’d loved Kyle a thousand times more than she’d even liked Madison.)

But when the blonde witch wakes up, she knows something’s wrong. It’s in the dusty air. “Zoe?” she calls, stumbling down the stairs in her thigh-high black heels. “Shit, shit, shit.”

The infected are stumbling into the house, and Madison decapitates them all with a jerk of her chin. She knows where Zoe’s gone, and for the first time in her long life, Madison Montgomery prays._ Please don’t let me be too late_.

Zoe tells herself this is about saving Mallory, and it might even be true. But for the most part, it’s about revenge. She can’t kill Madison, not in a way that sticks, so Michael will have to do.

It takes her roughly nine months to reach Hawthorne’s on foot, not trusting her own teleportation skills after so long, and she arrives bloodied but unharmed. Many of the infected and the survivors had attacked her, and when Zoe grew bored of them hacking uselessly at her skin, she would kill them. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly cruel, she wouldn’t even do that.

Zoe opens the gates with telekinesis. Michael must know she’s here, and she can’t bring herself to care.

She finds Michael with Mallory in Hawthorne’s ballroom, waltzing around a throne decorated with decayed skulls, and a different Zoe might have been afraid. Not this one.

Mallory’s head is high, and her eyes are full of a familiar dull-edged hatred Zoe’s seen in the mirror. She’s wearing a velvet dress the color of a throat slit down to the bone.

Michael twirls his captive and turns to face Zoe. “Aren’t you Madison’s little pet?” he asks, supremely uninterested, and Zoe lunges.


End file.
